That would be a weird meta-joke for Tira to be associated with, especially because that refers in general to pens and the written word. I guess kanji could count as painted instead of being written?
Subsumption (PMMM Faux-Quest) (Witch MC)
<Peerless Edge.> you interrupt, shifting it in your grip. <A provocativeness that can cut through any social sensibility.>
"Actually," Homura said from nowhere, "that weapon belongs to me." She emerged from behind a grass stalk with a hairflip, stepping to the middle of the path. "I see you have taken some of my abilities. That explains why you are still here, in this loop. Fortunately, I still have a few of my nukes from that other quest."
[-] Quick diplomacy, now! You've befriended Candeloro and Charlotte, right? You can raise allies for whatever multi-loop purpose she's been planning!
[-] Use your peerless edge against her!
"Actually," Homura said from nowhere, "that weapon belongs to me." She emerged from behind a grass stalk with a hairflip, stepping to the middle of the path. "I see you have taken some of my abilities. That explains why you are still here, in this loop. Fortunately, I still have a few of my nukes from that other quest."
[-] Quick diplomacy, now! You've befriended Candeloro and Charlotte, right? You can raise allies for whatever multi-loop purpose she's been planning!
[-] Use your peerless edge against her!
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I worry that Homura might be edgier than us. I know that her witch is...
Burned_Cookie
Very tired girl.
- Location
- Plato´s cave.
- Pronouns
- She/Her/It/Its
Don't worry we have Tira.
She shall unleash her ultimate move, the sonic OC she drew at 11.
BlackoutSampler
So Easily Forgotten
Don't be silly, Tira doesn't have a Sonic OC!
...She's japanese, so it's totally a Pokemon and/or Digimon OC.
But isn't Sonic Japanese? I thought Sonic => Sega => anime... But you are absolutely correct, Tira could totally have a Sonic+Pikachu+Agumon hybrid O.C., who is far more hardcore than any mere Sonic+Pikachu O.C.-D.N.S.s .
Out of curiosity: I was not aware that Tira was a hopeless chunnitaku, when was this revealed?
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Huh. I don't think I've seen it quite so explicitly, but I probably have seen it and just dismissed it as tropiness or poor understanding of AI. My disdain for the fetishization of heuristic cognitive/behavioral modifiers and incentives may have blinded me to its precise manifestation and prevalence.
I think Shemesh would come if we called. Though if he's not on the telepathy networks calling him might be a bit difficult.
…Hey, Sayaka, how good are you at making gong noises?
(Realistically, Tira is perfectly capable of making an actual gong. But, well,
)
Formal speech as a response to uncertainty and awkwardness? That would fit with her profile description, as would overcompensating for previous stuck-up-ness.
Knowledge, friendship, pictures of cats. Exercise, kindness, pictures of kittens.
FTFY
(Checking whether this joke had already been made, I found that Arial has only been used once, for the corner brackets in Confrontation 10. I suspect that this was a consequence of pasting them in without matching fonts, as corner brackets elsewhere are not Arial.)
Overdue? But we just got these books a few hours ago! How can they possibly already be overdue already!?
Well, there was that one time you shapeshifted into a nine-headed hydra and spent a few minutes chatting with yourself(?). But that was weird and existentially confusing and doesn't count.
There's a few possibilities. It could be Homura's fault. It could be from Tira's corrosive ink—there were plenty of constructs that got splashed in the fight. It could be a stray shot from Mami's laser cannon. It could be Shemesh's doing—perhaps discouraging an impolite familiar. Most likely, it's a result of the grief we pushed off to an unknown destination. It would make sense, if that resulted in Shemesh's re-formation—young planets tend be very hot.
I like these occasional reminders that Ashtaroth shares their senses.
How?
Sayaka's right to feel insulted, and I can sympathize with Tira being annoyed by Ashtaroth underselling her build. At the same time, Ashy's right that she isn't that strong, in large part because she can't (or hasn't figured out how to) use her abilities very well.
Illusions are extremely useful, but she almost never fights in Canvas, either because she's the aggressor or because she's out doing stuff. Shatterwords are a versatile, precise attack, but she hasn't trained herself in their use so she can't make and direct them well while also doing other things. Tearful Storm is a a powerful area-clearing attack, but she doesn't have practice mitigating its drawbacks. She's right that Heroic Leap is useful as a weak shield, but more than that it's useful as a (weak) forcefield which can be summoned anywhere (nearby) with no warning—excellent for active disruption of enemy movement, once she's practiced with it and figured out tactics and techniques. The giant sword isn't very useful for swordfighting unless she gets a better grip than her ribbons give her (and learns how to use a sword), but it would be pretty effective against static targets (unfavorable terrain features; bindings; large, immobile witches; etc.). Her flight kinda sucks, but it's still flight.
She's got a decent kit, but it takes some practice to use it well, and she's only two days old.
They don't, any more than you did? You wanted to do stuff, and got knowledge of how to do it; that requires no intelligence. Of course, that's an insufficient explanation, since witches sometimes act in ways seemingly informed by knowledge of their abilities. But we already know that witchstincts can do pretty complex things, from that big illusion they made for Sayaka.
Candeloro. Yes. Definitely looking at her chest because of Candeloro, nothing to do with her inviting you on an outing with just the two of you.
Nah. Let them have their date.
The problem with Sayaka and Mami is that they were determined to be her enemy before she even met them. She's done just fine with Hitomi and Tira. I'd sooner chalk up the lack of friends to a lack of interest in making them, plus memory issues possibly preventing her from remembering more casual relationships. Too little information to say anything for certain, though.
No, she's done quite a bit of soul-sucking.
Ashy can't really manage exponential growth. The limiting factor on the speed of her acquisition of new abilities is finding things to subsume, not combat time, and I don't think that's likely to permit significantly superlinear growth. If she acquired powers that let her find and subsume witches and magical girls in an expanding radius, then she could go quadratic if the radius is proportional to time, or exponential if the radius is proportional to total power.
That seems backwards. Sayaka wished to help everyone she cared about, and her idea of that was as a protector with a side note of wanting to heal Kamijou. The other-focused danger sense, the healing, the defensive enchantment, and the swords all stem from that idea. The platforms are just a utility power which doesn't really have anything to do with her wish.
Tira is similar. Ashtaroth didn't get the any of the art-related powers, just the pun-based one.
More data is needed before making any conclusions. If this is correct, though, then the most likely power for Ashtaroth to get from Homura would be her storage space—a utility power largely unrelated to her wish, which had to do with time and protection. Since she only got a tiny bit of Homura, it would probably be a much lesser version. Judging by Tira's purse (and Sayaka's clothes), she already had the ability to restore items carried by her subsumees, which I otherwise would have judged the most likely form for a weakened storage power to take—although those involve items banished by transformation, and who knows how that works.
IvanDead
My bones are made of schadenfreude.
- Location
- Brasil
Genuine displays of affection, sex, watching your bank account numbers go up, reading.
...No, I'm not a hoarder, I can spend that money anytime I want.
She has a head now, even though it's made up of abstract outlines, then probably like most people do, bowing only the uppermost part of her body.
Yeah, we are a pretty terrible witch. We needed to be saved by Charlotte when Tira and Mami teamed up against us, having only been able to survive a couple of Tiro Finales... We probably won't be able to outwit and surprise Homura again after she managed to just barely escape. Sayaka really didn't do badly either. She almost certainly would have won if she actually knew anything about grief expenditure and budgeting and that exhausting it is about as much of a failure condition to a fight as dying is. Lacking a piece of vital information about her own power, when she could reasonably expect to have been informed of that level of detail by either of her two apparently-trustworthy sources of Mami and Ink Baiter really shouldn't be counted against her.
- Location
- Wayland, Massachusetts
When you think about it, her effectiveness up until now is rivaled only by goddamn Walpurgisnacht..
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But would a gong made by Tira sound like a metal gong? It would be made out of ink after all.
...Huh, the Ummashtarts might be a way to get some hints on if Ashy had friends or not. We know Ashy had shapeshifting-powers before she became a Witch, and copying the appearance of someone else sounds like something she would have tried. There might be a few Ummashtart around that look like friends of pre-Witch Ashy she doesn't remember anymore.
Edit: Of course, going to her home and looking for pictures or a mobile phone with a contact list would be easier, but that's something for the next loop.
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Burned_Cookie
Very tired girl.
- Location
- Plato´s cave.
- Pronouns
- She/Her/It/Its
?????
The eternal library visitor, I, that one person that never gets anything done because they are glued to the screen, the unhealthily strong sportsmaniac and again the person that never gets of the net would like to thank you for your continued support, in order.
IvanDead
My bones are made of schadenfreude.
- Location
- Brasil
I thought they all converted to wikiwalkers.
- Location
- Wayland, Massachusetts
only most of them
Flairina
Least Omnipotent Goddess
- Location
- The next infinity over
*gasp* Hand holding?! Lap sitting?! Such impropriety! This cannot stand!
(There are several dirtier jokes/connections one could easily make here, but my sense of dignity and natural embarrassment both refuse to allow me to make them.)
Hey, be fair, Ashtaroth's ego isn't actually that big!... well, at least in the sense of thinking overly highly about oneself. Jury is still out on to what degree the word's other potential definitions might apply.
I mean... yes? In solving the one problem however, you have created roughly 50 more on both a textual and metatextual level, so perhaps that's not the best solution. ^^;
Interesting thought... argh, would be nice if I could discuss the subject of my thoughts on Walpurgisnacht in more depth without being tempted to give out spoilers for later...
(My current codenames for her familiars are "Der Zirkus" and "Magischmädchen", by the by.)
Nah, it's generally more symbolic than that. My thought would be something along the lines of a magical girl who'd previously been bullied by others for a long time, called stuff like "scum", "cockroach", and "sewer rat" over and over by her tormentors. The wish she makes is probably something about becoming popular and never being called those things again, or becoming supernaturally attractive, or something along those lines — but either way, she eventually ends up turning into the same kind of person she hated, looking down upon others and tormenting them in turn. Finally realizing this may be what eventually causes the witch out.
The witch herself I imagine would be an "ironic hell" style one in the same sort of vein as Shin. Her labyrinth ends up being tied to her resentment and rage over what people made her feel like before she made her wish, as well as her self-loathing over her own actions, and thus she literally becomes exactly what she was once accused of being, while existing in the same sort of place one would expect a repulsive creature like that to live. Said witch would probably be quite grotesque, likely with some sort of ridiculously insufficient "pretty" feature slapped on somewhere, and have a nature along the lines of "Glamor" for extra irony points. Alternatively, the witch herself could be quite beautiful on the outside, but become extremely ugly when attacking or "revealing" herself. Call her, say, Cady? Maybe something more historical/obscure, but in the same rough vein...
...why did I spend all this time plotting out characteristics and backstory for a witch/magical girl I will almost certainly never use? 🤔
Yeah, the current version is decent, but it's nowhere near the promised full game yet. Supposedly we're still waiting on a massive expansion to the number of dungeons, many more characters and locations to visit, way more mob types with complex behavior and interactions between themselves, shifting environmental factors, and possibly even another stage for the current final boss. Hope it gets updates soon.
(Also, if that was referring to my art, then thank you!
If i can just get this fic moving a little faster, perhaps there will be more of that soon.)She'd be of great interest to them, yes... but most likely, as an imprisoned test subject. One needs look no further than The Freezer to figure out that this is not a group that's likely to be all too keen on negotiating, sapient witch or not.
(The Magius over in Kamihama would probably react similarly come to think of it, and for similar reasons. Lots of rather uncompromising groups in the PMMM expanded universe.)
Threadmarked!
Ashtaroth: <Oh yeah, sure, I'll just go pop in with the local Witch of Wifi and set up a time for installation. Then we can access the internet any time we want via our nonexistent laptops! Great idea; no issues with that plan at all!>
Possibility 1 (American version): Instead of Shatterwords, Novella now produces massive flurries of colorful razor sharp confetti, made of the shredded remnants of people's written hopes and dreams for the coming year. Her branches and ribbons are made up in the style of a New Year's Tree, and she has the Time's Square Ball perched atop her stalk. When this ball drops, it emits a wave of concussive force accompanied by an ear-splitting burst of screaming cheers, signifying that a new era of suffering has begun.
Possibility 2 (Japanese version): Her Shatterwords are now exclusively composed of words from Japanese traditional new year's poetry, while her ribbons are decorated with images similar to those seen on pochibukuro. Tome is replaced by a Buddhist ringing bell and its various accoutrements. Once the bell has rung 108 times, the sins of all in its range are absorbed by Ashtaroth, as she cleanses their grief and impurity by taking all of it upon herself... but with these sins come their owners' souls, for they are part and parcel to each one.
I honestly don't know which one of these I'd pick as "canon" if I actually needed to, so... take your pick? 🎉
Yeah, she needs at least one more hair color and a lot more spikes. Can't be a Yugioh protagonist unless your hair looks like it requires at least two bottles of gel a day to keep intact!
The original name was literally just "Mightier", so yeah, Aunty has the right of it — remember that Tira's weapon is a "penbrush", not just a paintbrush. While unrelated to the actual act of writing, it is indeed tied to Tira's larger themes.
Well, he always LOOKS smug, but by his own words, he has no capacity for emotion. Every show of "feeling", be it happiness/annoyance/smugness/etc, is merely a facade...
According to him, at least. ／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼
*Homulily, with the top half of her head sloughing off and her hands in a stockade, marching off to her own execution in an endless procession*
Ashtaroth: <Could you please stop being emo for like, five minutes? This is entirely too depressing, even for a witch.>
Argh, figures. The formatting for this fic varies a lot, so there's probably a few other issues like that here and there. Hell, I still need to go through Confrontation's earlier chapters and replace all the hyphens with em dashes... on both versions of this fic... which is part of why I didn't want to start using them in the first place...
Heh, there should probably be more of them to be perfectly honest. I'm sort of implicitly excusing it with the fact that Ashtaroth still needs to learn to divide her attention better, and so misses internal things that she might not have otherwise, but sometimes it's just me failing to divide my attention enough to add lines in this regard when they'd be appropriate. ^^;
She really IS doing pretty well for her age. Most young adults flounder once they're forced into the witching world, and Ashtaroth technically is too, but she's doing it a lot more effectively than most other newbies!
Of course, doing too good a job is just likely to get you noticed by Kyubey, who may or may not enlist a team of magical girls to hunt you down so as make sure you don't unbalance the system/eat too many magical eggs before they've had time to hatch. As such, Ashtaroth might want to slow it down a bit...
Yeah, I admit I didn't phrase this part perfectly. What I inteded to say was that magical girls seem to have "instinctive" use of their abilities, in the sense that the knowledge is just ingrained in them as soon as they get it. They know how to use their magic, and they know that they know that, without needing to question themselves or practice (though they can certainly find new/better applications for it). One would assume the same to be true for witches, so it's strange that Ashtaroth appears to have an odd intermediate step where she doesn't realize she has certain information or skills until she bothers to think about/ask herself about them, or until something else brings them to her attention. I may go back and edit that bit to make it slightly clearer.
Indeed, she is the mosquito of the Madoka Magica-verse.
Heh, that's certainly true in a fashion — but, did you notice that almost none of that "success" came from effective power/magic usage on Ashtaroth's part? Saar was beaten by virtue of simple physics rather than any sort of magic, Shemesh did most of the work against Sayaka, and Charlotte essentially did ALL the work against Tira and Mami, the latter having remained untouched all battle up until she witched out (something that remained true during the fight against her witch, which finished only when Tira gave her a calm down hug). Ashtaroth managed alright against Charlotte and Candeloro's familiar swarms, and her trick against Homura was rather clever (in her own opinion), but all her magic ended up being good for in most of these cases was defending herself from attacks and stalling for time, before whatever happened to end the battle... happened.
Hence her assertion that she may kind of suck.
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We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
- Location
- New England
- Pronouns
- Plural
C: Mostly just wondering if Ashtaroth got dragged back in time. And therefore might encounter Past!Sayaka and Past!Tira.
- Location
- Terra-Luna
On the one hand, Homura overwrites her earlier self when she reverts. On the other... are Sayaka and Tira themselves anymore? Things are definitely screwy already, but Sayaka and Tira show more than a little evidence of being more aspects of Ashtaroth than independent beings, so I could see such encounters being possible now. Just a slight suspicion, but I think that miiight just make things a bit awkward. More, anyway.
If Sayaka and Tira replaced themselves, then they would have, well, replaced themselves.
"Sayaka! Sayaka why won't you wake up!"
Homura: "I see, now. That witch must have followed me back, and exceeded the control distance of Sayaka's subsumed soul gem. But, she will want to retrieve her asset, and that will be my chance to set a trap for her."
Ashtaroth: "Aw, hell."
"Sayaka! Sayaka why won't you wake up!"
Homura: "I see, now. That witch must have followed me back, and exceeded the control distance of Sayaka's subsumed soul gem. But, she will want to retrieve her asset, and that will be my chance to set a trap for her."
Ashtaroth: "Aw, hell."
Farseer Sen'Zabl
Accolyte of 'Common Sense'
- Location
- Dome of Crystal Seers, Ulthwe
Probably up for grabs.
There's been some debate about whether or not there are other Sayakas, Tiras, or possibly Mamis aside from Ashtaroth's ones due to how Homura's time travel seems to work. And I don't recall any definite evidence for either argument thus far.
Yeah, that there's the big question: are the girls still themselves, or are they just copies?
On one hand they seem to act like themselves, but on the other hand we have reason to believe that we lost a Miki to Homura's rockets during the fight but were still able to just conjure her back later.
Jaden Yuki would like to have words with you, honestly you would have been right if it wasn't for his existence
Farseer Sen'Zabl
Accolyte of 'Common Sense'
- Location
- Dome of Crystal Seers, Ulthwe
Huh, Touché. Can't believe I forgot that bit would still apply here.
Maybe I should adjust the question's phrasing to 'is the mind controlling Sayaka the original, or a copy?' given that the bodies are indeed replaceable and don't really matter as to whether Sayaka is still herself, or just something that thinks it's Sayaka.
Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
I have high hopes. The devs are really passionate about the game, and they've discussed their plans for future updates in a good amount of detail, considering their unwillingnessness to share spoilers. I very much look forward to new characters, locations, and mechanics.
I especially look forward to the mob interaction system really stepping up, they've stated multiple times they all have different interactions with each other, all related to what their 'jobs' are, and how they'll change based on which dungeon you find them in. Much more complex then a simple predator/prey system. Really, my only disappointment is that with so many mobs, they usually don't have any material drops, so the crafting system is limited to what is found in the dungeon environment, and even then you can't make much besides furniture to improve the morale of the NPCs.
That's fine really, the devs have a good system for upgrading your character and helpers, and it fits with the lore they've established. But you know, the heart wants what it wants.
I wasn't, though I do quite like the art. I was referring to the way you described locations, very vivid and creative! It's why I voted for Sayaka and Tira to go off on their own, I want to read more about the barrier from their perspective, both in the scale sense and the way they interpret the world.(Also, if that was referring to my art, then thank you!
Imprisoned test subject is the only way I saw this going. Magical Girls in groups for some reason seem to turn evil or so selfish they might as well be evil. For real, MGs have a real asshole problem.
- Location
- Wayland, Massachusetts
Asking the wrong question tbh. Mami's Witch was taken back into the past and so was her corpse, so what happened to Past!Mami?